


Ashen Quadrant Affair

by VastDerp



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Ashen Romance, Drama, Hatesex, M/M, Xenobiology, ashen infidelity, kismessitude, troll movie titles, trolljunk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-16
Updated: 2012-02-08
Packaged: 2017-10-29 16:32:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/321872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VastDerp/pseuds/VastDerp
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which auspisticizing Dave and Karkat is the shittiest job in the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Sollux is scrunched up over his shitty Earth-constructed laptop on the couch when Dave sweeps in without even knocking. What an asshole. He's gotten into the habit of speeding himself up and picking the lock--God forbid a Strider ever _ask for a fucking key._ Or knock. He used to freeze time to do it until Jade gave him the business about consent issues for, oh, the entire universe around him.

Sollux turns around to deliver the usual verbal spanking (which he already knows will be ignored, but there's a certain formality to these things) he sees how Dave's hair is sticking up in sweaty pale clumps, how his shirt is muddy, and he changes his mind. Fucking _again_. He wants to accuse Strider of sticking them in a timeloop, but no. It's just the crushing mindless repetition of plain old ordinary living.

"Did you at least win?" Sollux asks, weary, and saves his work with an affected little sigh, which is ignored. This is only the latest laptop closer in a long line of them, and it's getting perilously close to red-and-blue spark territory. And he's been doing so well with his temper.

"Murg," Dave says. He slumps onto the couch next to Sollux and lets his head roll back against the cushion. "Fought his stubby little ass to a draw and then we both fell down some stairs."

"Of course you did." Predictable. So predictable. Karkat drops everyone down the goddamn stairs. It's like a rite of passage. Makes his teeth ache and his eyesockets throb even though that wasn't even technically KK's fault.

"It's cool, he gave me bus fare home." Dave groans and rubs his shoulder. Sollux should reach over and give him a hard poke, really, but his bloodpusher isn't in it today.

"Your love is god," he mumbles instead.

Dave grimaces, flexes the shoulder a few times like he's still waiting to be cooed over or punched, and takes off his cracked shades. No black eye this time, which is a nice change. Always good to see the little things deviate from the pattern. "I need beer."

"What you need is a healthy kick in the ass to go with the nosebleed, Strider. Why do you even do this to yourself?"

Dave huffs a silent laugh. "It's just so funny when he goes red," is all he'll say. Then his nose starts to bleed again and Sollux has to go get the bag of peas back out of the freezer. The peas no one ever eats because they keep using them for first aid.

 _Worst mediator ever._

He also brings out a half-full bottle of whiskey instead of the beer, because seriously fuck listening to Dave wax caliginous about Karkat Vantas in any condition remotely resembling sobriety.

This has been going on for weeks. Dave disappears for hours, comes back with his back all scratched to fuck, covered in dainty little love-bites, a black eye one late hungover morning, some cracked ribs on Valentine's day. Says it's ironic, whatever the screeching fuck that means. Sollux has long since come to the conclusion that Dave doesn't really know either. The sex must be incredible, or Dave just likes looking at concrete real up close. Whatever it is that they need out there, just the two of them.

"You never listen," he mutters, and he's pretty sure Strider can hear him from all the way in the living room, but he gets no reply.

 _What am I even here for?_

God, here comes the dark shit, right on schedule. Days like this, the black flows out of the world and just climbs down his throat, heavy and thick. It sets up a nice cold little nest of barbed wire and ice shards in the pit of his guts, makes him want to just hit the floor and stay there, because seriously, what _is_ he here for? KK and the douchebag want to go at it so bad, let them. Let them kill each other, he doesn't need this shit.

 _Oh yeah? You fucking liar._

He sighs. Honesty is the worst part of the depression, he thinks. He's so fucking tired of the honesty. Who even listens?

He wonders what Karkat looks like right now. Doing the aftercare schtick on both sides, he's used to the ways they fuck each other up. He grudgingly admits that Dave, despite being a lanky little fuck with practically no claws at all, is scary as hell. Karkat's injuries tend to need butterfly bandages and the occasional stitch. Thank god Kanaya lives in town to save on hospital bills.

She'd be so much better at this and they both know it. She tried to give him some pointers once. He unpacked his recupe that night and stayed at the bottom of the blue side for a week. They avoid the topic so perfectly it's outlined in negative space between them, even bolder and more of an accusation than if they'd just have it out once and for all.

And oh hey, how about he gets the fuck out of this kitchen before he gets stuck in his head? That would be just super cool.

The liquor beckons.

"I think he broke your nose," he observes, and drops the clumpy frozen-thawed-frozen-thawed-frozen peas on Dave's head with a muted thump and a total lack of ceremony. He could be gentler about this, but fuck it. They're going to go behind his back and see spades at each other, fine. Nobody said he had to pity them for it. Let them pull each other apart, what does he care?

But he does, he wants to punch them both. And maybe knock their heads together a few times. He'd do it without his psionics, that's how much they're pissing him off right now.

"But he loves me!" Dave says this in that trembly high pitched voice that usually indicates he's making fun of something he's heard before. It comes out muffled from where his nose is blocked off by the pea bag.

"You're both fucking retarded," Sollux replies, and takes a swig directly from the bottle. A big one that burns the whole way down.

"I know," Dave says, quietly, and it's sort of surprising, getting the truth like that. "Sorry."

"Fuck off," Sollux says. "Both of you."

Here's how it's going to go: Sollux will offer to put on a movie, Dave will say no. Sollux will pick something shitty and sappy, something KK would watch and wibble over like a goddamn idiot, just to piss Dave off. Dave will watch it with the peas defrosting in his lap and his swelling nose forgotten, fake-crying and clawing at Sollux's shirt during the sad parts. They'll punish each other with these tiny little pinpricks until the black wind Dave brought home with him and blew in Sollux's face shifts again, until the little barbed wire nest stops jabbing.

They'll order a pizza and Dave will whine that it tastes like blood. The two of them will end up drunk and petting each other's hair like wigglers on a first date, apologizing and reassuring each other and finally just plain fooling around on the couch until Jade comes home, calls them both a couple of brazen hussies with no goddamn decorum, steals half the pizza and vanishes into her bedroom with it.

This is Sollux's weekend. Every weekend. It tastes like burned things until the whiskey blasts out everything but the taste of not being good enough, and he wonders if that's why they call it _ashen_.


	2. WEEKS IN THE PAST, BUT NOT MANY...

"Yeah, it's not insulting at all when Sollux Captor climbs down from his throne of half-dried hoofbeastshit to lecture me about how to handle myself in a relationship. Preach on, wise one, and get it the fuck over with. Your _other_ matesprit probably wonders where you got off to."

"KK, goddamn it, that's low."

"I guess that makes us even!" Karkat snarls. They're both hot and blushing from the force of their argument, which has taken them from Karkat's tiny kitchen to his respiteblock and back out to the living room in a bizarre dance of angry flailing. God, this sucks so hard, how do they always end up like this whenever they talk?

"I guess it does!" Sollux shoots back.

"So since we've established that _both_ of us are scraping the bottom of the barrel so hard we're getting splinters, how about you let me handle my own blackrom and I'll leave you to yours? Oh wait, you don't have a kismesis, because then you'd be too fucking lazy to go out and find a second one to match."

Sollux ignores this dig. "How about you stop beating the snot out of each other long enough for the bruises to go away?"

"Because that's not the _point_ , shithead."

"Oh, fuck _that_ sideways. There's no rule that says you have to do _this_ to each other." Sollux waves at Karkat, at the torn shirt and the barely-faded black eye. "Because that's not caliginous, douchebag. That's _you_. And I'm sick of it, okay?"

Karkat says nothing. He glares at Sollux, his face infuriatingly blank. Sollux tries to pry his hands back out of their aching fists, tries to stop thinking about how much he'd like to just pop KK in the jaw right now, but he can't hold on to either attempt. He can feel his horns starting to buzz.

"What are you, going pale for me all of a sudden? Who's gonna be your emergency backup in _this_ quadrant?"

"God damn it, KK, lay off the--"

"You're all about telling _me_ what I'm doing wrong, but oh _no_ , heaven for-fucking-bid I say two words about you and Strider. Typical indecisive Captor shit. Why do I even bother."

"That's not what this is about."

"No?"

"Just... I mean... Okay, it's like..." He trails off. "The way things are, like with you two fighting all the time. I mean. Karkat, I don't think you and I can..." No, he's not going to say it. He's not going to put it out in the open while they're screaming at each other like wigglers. "You know what? Never mind." He turns to leave Karkat's apartment.

"No. No fucking _way_ you're walking out on that note." Karkat dogs Sollux all the way to the door, and before Sollux can get the door open Karkat's on him, turning him around by his shoulders so they're nose-to-nose.

"Let me go." Sollux says, his voice starting to shake.

"No. Go _on_ , enlighten me to this new and totally unexpected way I fail to be adequate to your flushed needs. _What_ don't you think? You can't stand me and Strider together, so you're picking? You fucking traitor, _I was here first."_

"It's not like that." Sollux's voice drops. All the fight's gone out of him. Karkat being insecure like this is the primary reason he pities the fuck out of him, which makes this so much harder to say.

"Surprise me, then. What's the _other_ reason you're kicking me to the roadside?"

"Jesus, KK. You're supposed to be the quadrant master here. You honestly need me to spell this out?" Sollux stares at the floor and feels like shit.

"I guess I'm just stupid, then, because obviously I _do_. What the fuck am I missing?"

Sollux puts up one hand, and for a moment Karkat thinks he's going to hit him. Instead he reaches up and runs his fingers gently down the scratches on Karkat's cheek. "I'm fucking waxing ashen for you, shitstub." he says. "You and Strider. So yeah, I guess I can't be your matesprit anymore, unless you two cut it the fuck out. Which you won't do, because you're both retarded. And obviously neither of you give a shit about _my_ feelings, so that kind of leaves me out in the cold, doesn't it? Congratulations, I guess."

In the stunned silence that follows, he manages to knock Karkat's hand off his shoulder and get the door open enough to slip through. He lets it shut behind him, gently, and he's already to the rickety elevator by the time he hears the hoarse and grating voice of his ex rip through the hallway.

**_"WHAT THE FUCK?"_ **

\--

Auspisticism is complicated.

It's so complicated that the entire point of the quadrant is that nobody knows what the fuck is going on, ever. Moreso than the other three by far, and that's saying something.

You've got two wildly unstable or dangerous opposing parties on the verge of black romance, and a third person intervening to keep it from boiling over into a full fledged affair. That's as far as you can take the definition before it devolves into a clusterfuck of tension and drama unique to each triad.  
  
Karkat, like most modern trolls, fucking hates ashen romance.   
  
The quadrant is neglected, avoided and misunderstood, shoved off in a corner... where it fucking belongs, in his opinion. It's a catch-all for freaks who can't keep their shit together or pick a mate and stick with them. He should have seen it coming from Captor of all people. The dumbass does everything in twos. But he didn't see it coming, that's the thing.

Auspisticism isn't even properly _romantic_. You can't get three contentious fuckwits in any sort of position to gaze into each other's eyes. How can you have long intimate talks about nothing under the stars with two people, one of whom you can't stand?

Karkat leans on his door in a daze and thinks about the great romances in his film collection.  
  
 _In Which Two Trolls, An Indigo And A Maroon, Are Fated To Meet And Be Culled Together On A Starship Doomed To Strike An Asteroid On Its Maiden Voyage (etc)._ A flushed cinematic masterpiece with hints of a flip to moirallegiance  at the end. Heartbreaking and inspirational. His all-time favorite.  
  
 _Two Lowly Secretacticians In A Flushed Relationship Reveal Their True Identities As Undercover Laughsassins When Each Is Hired To Cull The Other, Featuring A Flip From Red To Black Romance, Extreme Hive Demolition And Several Shootouts._ One of the funniest movies in the entire romantic comedy genre.  
  
 _A Tale Involving A Legislacerator And A Rogue Auspistice Who Has Gone Feral And Begun Eating His Quadrantmates, Featuring Several Scenes Of Cannibalism, One Involving A Living Victim, And A Terrifying Attack By Trained Troll-Eating Oinkbeasts (etc)._ And okay, yeah, there's _some_ ashen in there, but the whole _point_ is that it's so dysfunctional it kills people. Totally caliginous romance between Lecter and Starling. The scene where he cuts off his hand instead of hers is pretty much the hottest thing he's ever seen in a film.   
  
Hell, even pale romance gets _In Which Two Adolescent Greenbloods Have Adventures And Learn Valuable Life Lessons Until One Of Them Is Stung By Ripperwasps And Dies Horribly, A Musical._ He has to admit this one's not that great, but he still gets misty eyed at the ending. Their love could have been _epic_ if not for the ripperwasps.  
  
And what the fuck does the ashen quadrant get? _Anger Management?_ Fuck that. He'll swear off romance _forever_ if the best he can do is Human Adam Sandler.

So Strider and him, never quite going fully caliginous, with Sollux in the middle trying to bulgeblock them both? _No, no, no._ And lose Sollux in flushed in the bargain? _Fuck_ no. Worst idea _ever._  
    


He could break it off with Strider, but that's not cool, you can't just ditch your black partner because your red one doesn't like him. Karkat would end up resenting the choice, taking it out on Sollux and flipping black with him instead. Blackrom based on one offense never lasts, and besides that, he can't stand the idea of ever hating Captor. But the other option is ending up in the bullshit nowhere land of clubs and fail with the both of them.

There's no drone problem on Earth, but that doesn't mean he can just undo six sweeps of conditioning all at once. And it's not just Karkat. _Everyone_ from Alternia has been having this problem as the big ten approaches. Tavros is practically in therapy over his inability to hand Vriska the shiny black spade he's been carrying around for the past two sweeps. And shitheels like Terezi who have nailed all three of the real quadrants are starting to strut around like they're _God_.

When he woke up this morning he had his concupsicent quads locked the fuck _down_.  Even if the drones were still A Thing, he had nothing to worry about. Well, except maybe for his completely no-big-deal occasional flaming humiliated rage toward Sollux for refusing to pick between him and the smug human douchebag. But other than that, it was perfect.

Now?  
  
It finally dawns on Karkat that he's just been dumped. He feels a sudden rush of sympathy for Eridan Ampora, and as soon as this happens he locks the door, rushes the fridge and loads his arms with chilled bottles of shitty American beer. He needs to drink himself into a stupor. As quickly as possible. _Hurry_.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In Which Karkat Vantas and Dave Strider Both Need Therapy But The Sex Is Good So That's All Right Then Isn't It

"I just love it when you romance me like a princess, babe."

Dave says this all smug and sexy in his head, but in the real world, filtered through the mouthful of spit-soggy black fabric that was borrowed from Karkat's shirt only minutes ago, it comes out sounding like a bunch of horny w's having an orgy in his sinuses. "Shit's like a fairytale match made in heteronormative white boy heaven and then dragged down where the other half lives with its wrists tied up behind its back and its underpants snipped off by a deranged gray midget who can't even keep a matesprit to save his life."

"Shut the fuck up." Karkat's voice is flat enough you'd never know just by listening what he's actually doing right now, except for all the wet skin-on-skin noises in the background. And the purring. _Fucking trolls._

"It's just like I always dreamed. Me and my Prince Charming riding off into the sunset on a white horse. Mostly, anyway. Except my Prince is an ugly little fuck with sharp-ass teeth who insists on giving drunken blowjobs, and he's the one riding me. No horse involved. Actually, you know what? It's not a fairy tale at all. It's Jaws, with the shark in my goddamn pants. I drop trou and all I see is rows and rows of Pepsodent-sparkly fangs aimed right at Junior." 

"Shut up." Karkat smacks him on the ass with a free hand and works the other one faster. Dave's toes curl. He arches his back and digs his fingers into the bedspread so hard his cuffed fists hurt.

"I'm going to --ah-- sue that fucking fairy godmother. I was promised a Disneyesque adventure." He wipes his face across the bed surface and turns it sweat-spongy. There's sweat beading in his fucking eyelashes. "Walt Disney probably never even heard the word prostate. You little shit. Fuck me."

"Fuck _you!"_

"Fine. Since you found two whole new words for me, I'll be the goddamn pony. Mnh. How about it, Karkles? Wanna saddle me up and set those spurs where it ahh--oh fuck--counts?"

"I hate you."

"Prove it. Ride me hard and put me away wet, bitch, I AM the steed. Oh fuck, don't--" Dave can't hold back an actual by-god _whimper_ , and it's the lamest sound he's ever made.

There's a scale for Embarrassing Strider Noises that starts at _church picnic handie in the bushes_ and tops off at _we just bought this bottle of lube last week, what the fuck did you do, drink it?_ He figures they're somewhere around an eight right now. He has one of those boners you could chisel through a mountainside with if someone painted a nice pair of tits on it first. Karkat, being Karkat, is ignoring the state of said hard-on in favor of committing pelvic war crimes upon Dave's tender helpless ass. Junior has to settle for accidental contact with the lovecraftian garden of delights trolls have going on down south.

He has to admit it's pretty nice, if your idea of a good time is to stick your dick in a saltwater aquarium and hope for the best.

"We should get married." Dave decides, angling for the right line to bring this all together. He knows Karkat can understand him, Karkat understands fluent gagged subenese, and sure enough, Karkat stops moving and the aforementioned random squirmy things (that Dave never wants to know the name or biological function of) pause their restless coiling around the general area of destruction.

"Think Captor will let us both wear black?"

Bam. He's said the magic word. The eye of the hurricane passes over, the storm resumes, and Karkat rakes four thin white lines across each of Dave's inner thighs and digs in. Two seconds later the lines are beading with blood and it's getting on both of them, little shocking-red rorschach blob-prints twinned from Dave's pale thighs to Karkat's weirdly curvy dusty gray hips, smearing around when he moves, and it's a damn good thing neither of them has AIDS or the alien clap or whatever, because that's just plain unhygienic.

He adjusts his angle, drags Dave into a new position, and it's not gentle. Dave tries to gasp but finds himself choking on the wad of shirt now crammed halfway into his throat. Karkat is in a blind fury now, all his words swallowed up by his bottomless well of wrath, and Dave just grunts and thrashes, which pisses him off more. Now he's snarling like somebody took his chew toy away. Just a little yappy Vantas nipping at his heels.

Which, now that Dave thinks about it, he has actually done in the past. They were just such convenient targets at the time. It was his own fault for forgetting the obvious: Dave's a screamer, a back-scratcher and a shit talker, but little Karkles is a biter. Get those octocock accoutrements flailing around like a spider plant in a tornado and he's like to chew through your dick.

This is why Dave has never taken him down highway sixty nine.

He tuned Terezi out when she tried to explain black romance. She made it sound so boring, even with the admittedly hilarious illustrations. This is the opposite of boring. This is wet and sick and slick and fiery, getting his freaky hate-boyfriend so pissed off he literally forgets how to talk, watching him get redder and redder in the face because whoever's on top, _he's_ the one being fucked into low orbit and they both know it.

Dave knows Karkat's secret. The well isn't bottomless, although Vantas obviously wishes it was. There's this one tiny little moment where, if Dave doesn't blink, he can see the exact second where the hamster finally falls off the wheel in Karkat's brain. The actual limit of what he can take. Hit that spot and for about a minute and a half there's no lights on and nobody home, nothing at all in those glowy orange cat-eyes except a double reflection of Dave's own face smirking down (or up) at him.

It's totally bizarre to watch a guy go all helpless like that, falling apart just for you, and know it's because he hates your ass so fucking much he can't stand it.

Dave wonders if that's why he pushes Karkat so hard, making snippy little remarks to rile him up, goading him into wrath. Why Dave's usually the first one to bring out the fists and the dirty back-alley fighting moves and then herd Karkat with taunts and headbutts into a frenzy, until the clothes come off and they're fucking like wild animals. Why Dave takes it so far even the trolls are getting a wee bit twitchy about their Thing.

Karkat can act like Dave's nothing all day long, but that look on his face when he gets off doesn't lie. That look says that, for just a little while, Dave's _everything_. Which means he's _something_. Whatever that means.

He wonders if he's evil or if he's just good at playing the quadrant game and this is normal for aliens. He'd ask Terezi for that refresher course but he's not sure he wants to know. Rose has four or five theories, but they all boil down to "this shit is unhealthy" and she wouldn't know a personality disorder from a urinal cake so whatever.

The way Sollux has started avoiding them both isn't something they've discussed, but it's there in what they don't say. He figures it's probably written all over his face. Since he's about to be the first one to come and his glasses are always off when they fuck, Karkat can see it all.

 _Hell with it,_ he thinks, _let him look._

He can't breathe. He's starting to swallow the gag. His vision isn't much, just the sweaty bedspread and his hands dug into it, but it's swimming with flares and sparks and sun-bright glitter.

His ass is killing him, Karkat's killing him, these shitty eBay handcuffs are killing him, he's about to put the ass back in asphyxiate and he's whining and making animal noises and drooling and his toes are curling and he thinks he's probably going to die--

Karkat reaches around and rips out the dripping shredded gag with the bit of his sign still clinging to the fabric, and the rush of oxygen to the brain from his first panicked gulp of air hits him like a fucking mack truck doing 80 down a mountainside. It may not be an orgasm longer than some pop songs, but it's pretty much all he can stand. Chalk it up to human inferiority, holy fucking shit.

If two people hate each other enough, do they cancel each other out? Does it warp into some weird double-reacharound so they end up hating themselves? Does that mean he actually just hates himself and this is masturbation?

And that shit right there, is that a metaphor for spiritual despair or a warning about some crazy motherfuckers about to go down in a come-spattered murder-suicide?

Fuck.

_Fuck._

He loves to hate him. Or is it the other way around?

Right around this point everything goes white, and _good riddance.  
_

He'd be scared shitless if this didn't feel so fucking amazing.


End file.
